India, Dec. 29 -- A study has projected a sharp rise in the number of glaciers disappearing worldwide, peaking between 2014 and 2055 with up to 4,000 glaciers vanishing annually depending on the level of warming above pre-industrial levels. That is equivalent to losing all the glaciers in the European Alps in just one year.

An ETH Zurich-led team quantified the disappearance of each of the world's more than 200,000 glaciers included in the global Randolph Glacier Inventory version 6.0 under four policy-relevant global warming scenarios - 1.5 degC, 2.0 degC, 2.7 degC and 4.0 degC above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change on December 15, 2025, used three global glacier models. It introduced the con...